On April 3, 2018, at 12:46 p.m., a lone shooter attacked YouTube’s headquarters in my home town of San Bruno, California. As a small city of 42,957 souls, San Bruno normally has a single dispatcher on shift. In an amazing stroke of coincidence, the dispatcher who took the first YouTube call was also on shift during the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion.

After more calls started coming in, San Bruno’s mutual aid pact with Burlingame was activated, bringing more dispatchers online to handle the 120 calls that came in over the next hour.

San Bruno Police (SBPD) records staff also pitched in, picking up 80 of the first calls and helping with calls from the media, which came in a scant 10 minutes after the first 911 call was made.

Public information about the female shooter detailed how she had purchased a S&W 9mm pistol with 10 round magazines around 60 days prior to the shooting, had traveled some 300 miles from her home in Southern California to San Bruno, and had practiced at the Jackson Arms Shooting Range from 11:00-11:30 a.m. before driving to the YouTube HQ.

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